Dealing With Back Pain After an Accident

New Guidelines For Handling Back Pain

Back pain after an accident can feel, and be debilitating. The lingering shoots of pain are not fun to deal with, and knowing how to deal with them in the first place is overwhelming. But we are here to tell you, don’t go straight to medicine or drug therapy options.

New guidelines from the American College of Physicians say that those types of treatments shouldn’t be first in line. For back pain, mainly lasting less than three months, such as after a car accident, other treatments need to be considered first. These might include:

What if the Pain Continues?

If these non-medicinal treatments fail, then anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen should be considered first, then after trying that, medications that can dull nerve pain can be tried.

While these guidelines don’t follow America’s “medicated” mentality, they can be extremely effective. Hospital for Special Surgery physical therapist Dana Rose says, “By activating and using your core muscles that should lessen the load through our joints to help minimize back pain.”

According to CBS, Berta Axelrad, 76, has lived with chronic low back pain for most of her life (Cause Unknown). Axelrad commented, “The pain is just so, well, it’s terrible!” She combats the pain by doing exercise, yoga and walking. She says “It minimizes the pain, it’s not always easy, but it’s much better than doing nothing.”

These guidelines are brought up at a particularly relevant time in this country, when we are fighting an opioid abuse epidemic. The CDC is urging doctors to lessen the amount that they recommend opioid painkiller prescriptions.

If you have back pain due to an accident, consider these guidelines when you get to the pain management stage of your injury recovery, it might save you unnecessary use of medications and help you feel a lot better.

Injured and dealing with back pain after an accident? Call Attorney Mike Hancock at 813.915.1110 for a free consultation.